Table Of ContentUniversity of Nebraska - Lincoln
Transcultural Transformation:
African American and Native American Relations
By
Barbara S. Tracy
A DISSERTATION
Presented to the Faculty of
The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska
In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements
For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Major: English
Under the Supervision of Professor Frances W. Kaye
Lincoln, Nebraska
November, 2009
Transcultural Transformation:
African American and Native American Relations
Barbara S. Tracy, Ph.D.
University of Nebraska, 2009
Advisor: Fran Kaye
The intersected lives of African Americans and Native Americans result not only in
Black Indians, but also in a shared culture that is evidenced by music, call and response,
and story. These intersected lives create a dynamic of shared and diverging pathways
that speak to each other. It is a crossroads of both anguish and joy that comes together
and apart again like the tradition of call and response. There is a syncopation of two
cultures becoming greater than their parts, a representation of losses that are reclaimed by
a greater degree. In the tradition of call and response, by denying one or the other
something is lost. Claiming the relationship turns transcultural transformation into a
powerful response. Working from Henry Gates‟ explanation of signifying combined with
Houston Baker‟s description of blues literature, I examine signifying, call and response,
and blues/jazz elements in the work of three writers to discover the collective lives of
African Americans, Native Americans, and Black Indians. In the writing of Black-
Cherokee Alice Walker, I look for the call and response of both African and Native
American story-ways. I find these same elements in the writing of Spokane/Coeur
d‟Alene writer Sherman Alexie, in his blues writings and his revision of Robert
Johnson‟s and other stories. In the work of Creek/Cherokee Craig Womack, I examine a
Creek/Cherokee perspective of Black Creeks and Freemen. In all of these works, I find
that the shared African American and Native American experience plainly takes place in
these works in a variety of ways in which the authors call upon oral and written story,
song, and dance, and create a response that clearly signifies the combined power of these
shared experiences. This is a fusion of shared traditions with differences that
demonstrate the blending of voices and culture between two peoples who have been
improvising together for a long time.
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Copyright 2009, Barbara S. Tracy
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In Memory of Anna Mae Spurlock:
grandmother, storyteller, musician--the one who started it all
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the librarians at Southeast Community College, especially Pat
Peterson and Jeanette Bean, who prove that great librarians work in small libraries. I am
in debt to their enthusiasm and direction in my research.
I owe many thanks to my friends and colleagues who offered suggestions and
read my work as it progressed. Particularly, Daniel Justice for his advice, support, and
reading, to James Cox for responding to my endless questions about Sherman Alexie, to
Regina Thunder Hawk for hours of reading and musical expertise, to Bob Moyer for
reading and for sharing his guitar knowledge, to Michael Knisely, Jennifer Nginoe, and
Elizabeth Aleksander for reading, and Grant Langdon for reading and pushing me for
answers. To Tamy Burnett for constant support and encouragement. To my co-workers
and colleagues at Southeast Community College and especially Carolee Ritter, my
department chair, who encouraged and supported my efforts to write while teaching full-
time. For the support and patience of my team in the SCC Writing Center. To my
writing and cycling friends who kept me on target, sane, and well fed, especially Jan
Hicks, Michael Chilcote, Alan Morris, Scott Wesely, Sharon Sayre, and Fran Oran.
Finally, thanks to my children and grandchildren for their love, patience, and
inspiration. Jennifer, Melissa, and Grant, your songs that fills my heart. You are my
muses who keep me dreaming and motivated. To Charlie, Mu Jwok, Madisyn, Ayoul,
Okello, and Ba Jung who keep me playing, dancing, wondering, and listening.
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Table of Contents
Abstract iii
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction: Speaking of Things Yet Unspoken: Native
Americans, African Americans, and Black Indians 1
1. The Red-Black Center of Alice Walker‟s Meridian:
Asserting a Cherokee Womanist Sensibility 19
2. Crossroads: The African American and Native American
Blues Matrix in Sherman Alexie‟s Reservation Blues 44
3. “Red is Red”: Transcultural Convergence and Craig
Womack‟s Drowning in Fire 84
Conclusion: Common Ground: Let the Music Start 118
Works Cited 122
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Introduction
Speaking of Things Yet Unspoken:
Native Americans, African Americans, and Black Indians
“No outsider knows where Africa ends or America
begins” (Silko Almanac of the Dead 421).
1
“Africans and Americans must now be studied
together without their relations always having to be
obscured by the separations established through the
work of scholars focusing essentially upon some
aspect of European expansion and colonialism”
(Jack D. Forbes Africans and Native Americans 1).
The intersected lives of African Americans and Native Americans result in Black
Indians and a shared culture of music, call and response, and story in forms of what
Henry Louis Gates identifies as signifying. These intersected lives create a dynamic of
shared and diverging pathways that speak to each other. It is a crossroads of both anguish
and joy that comes together and apart again like the tradition of call and response. Two
cultures become greater than their parts, representing losses that are reclaimed by a
greater degree. In the tradition of call and response, the lack of one or the other leaves
1
Forbes uses the word American for American Indian in the colonial period and African
or Black African for sub -Saharan Africans to avoid the “ambiguous Indian and Negro.”
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something lost. Claiming the relationship summons transcultural transformation into a
powerful response. Without a call there is no response; without response the call is left
crashing in the wind.
The title of my introduction “Speaking of Things Yet Unspoken,” is borrowed
from a keynote address given by Toni Morrison in 1989 titled “Unspeakable Things
Unspoken” in which she discussed the marginalization of African American literature.
Since that speech, much has happened in African American literature, and we can be
pretty certain that students leaving high school will know the works of a few African
American authors; although not perfect, today we see a marked improvement in this area
since 1989. While much is being done to move African American, Native American,
Asian American, Chicano/Chicana, and Latino/Latina literature out of the margins and
into the mainstream, a significant gap remains in literary discussions of mixed bloods,
particularly those who live on more than one hyphen and who remain on the margin of
the margins. Invisible mixed bloods and erased cultural exchanges, much like invisible
beings and empty landscapes “found” by “discovery” and colonization, become a
canvas--assumed empty by the dominant cultures--upon which they can then interpret
and reinvent mixed blood communities which center on European encounters with
“otherness.”
A few years ago my son came home from high school eager to show me
something. Tearing through his backpack, he found his World History II book. Having
listened to the topic of my research for many years, he keeps a keen eye for anything of
interest. The book is beautiful, full of color, photographs, classic paintings and maps. He
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turned the pages to a drawing from the New York Library titled African Slave and Indian
Woman. The caption below the picture reads:
A black slave approaches an Indian prostitute. Unable to explain what he
wants, he points with his finger; she eagerly grasps for the coin. The
Spanish caption above moralizes on the black man using stolen money—
yet the Spaniards ruthlessly expropriated all South American mineral
wealth. (McKay, Hill, and Buckler 544)
The picture starts a section titled “European Slavery and the Origins of American
Racism,” and is placed opposite a map of the African slave trade. Within the contexts of
the last line of the caption, the writers‟ emphasis is on the irony of the Spanish
commentary on Blacks stealing money when the Spanish themselves stole from South
Americans. However, the discussion stops there. No mention of interactions between
Indians and Blacks follows. The students are left with this image of over-sexed Black
thieves and Indian prostitutes. The section does, however, mention that as early as 1495,
the Spanish, followed by the Portuguese, Dutch, and English, began unsuccessfully
enslaving Indians in the Americas (545). Later in the book it discusses mestizos of
Spanish and Indian background and mulattos of Spanish and African heritage (915).
However, the section makes no mention of Indian and African mixed bloods.
Throughout the section on slavery in the U.S., the book does not mention that Native
Americans owned Black slaves. Later in discussion of the then approaching year 2000
and the new census, it mentions Native Americans marrying “outside their group,”
Blacks and whites marrying, Asians and whites, and Hispanics and Blacks (940-41).
While one text book on world history since 1500 certainly cannot begin to dive deeply
